Watch out for weeds
Weeds have been dominating my garden lately. I have all kinds of beautiful plants I would like to see flourish, yet the things that are most successful are the weeds. You don’t need to put in any effort for weeds to grow. They just happen. And if you don’t do anything about them, the garden will become dominated by weeds. It takes significant effort to pull weeds out, to spray them, or to mulch to try to slow them down.
This has made me think about the realities of the Christian life. Living a life that trusts Jesus and honours Him requires effort. Yes, the Spirit motivates us and points us to a life of holiness, that is true. But we need to plan and to do things. It is far easier to drift through life like so many do and not think about what we are doing.
Jesus spoke about the wide and narrow paths. Going down the wide path was both easy and popular, but it ended in destruction. While going down the narrow path was complicated and required effort, but it ended in life. Living in the kingdom of God requires effort and cost from us.
If our lives were like a garden bed, Christians know what we should have growing there. If we are to cultivate our love for God and honour Him well, we should include a lot of the Word of God. We should have prayer as a significant priority. The local church and personal evangelism are important too. If these things are not significant parts of our lives, if they are not cultivated and flourishing, it probably isn’t because we don’t think they matter. It is because life gets in the way. Other things just kind of crowd them out. And if that goes on long enough, it is as if those things we theoretically think are so central don’t really feature in our lives at all.
We should take the warning in the parable of the Sower seriously. He said this about those on whom the word of God fell but were unproductive:
As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Matt. 13:22 ESV)
In other words, life gets in the way. Good intentions don’t always lead to good, godly practices. The things we ideally should be doing don’t get done and we cultivate weeds and not valuable plants.
Busyness is not a mark of importance. Sometimes we need to slow down and say no to things so that the things that matter more have space to get done well. For us to make good decisions about what to spend our time and effort on, and whether we are doing it well now, we need space to think and pray. We shouldn’t just ask, “How do I do all of these things?” We should ask, “Are these the things I am convinced are the things worth doing?”